Mud fever, cough and dominance

This morning didn’t go well once more. I found out that the bad days always happen when I come back to see Niro after my 4 days off…Wonder why!

He welcomed me with the ears back, he pushed me around his stall eating my coat (probably looking for carrots) and squeezed me to the wall when I removed his rug. Then he started tossing his head and looking really unhappy. I decided not to take him out as long as he looked like this. So I started mucking out and preparing his feed.

One of the grooms yelled at me for using one of HIS bins to steam my hay. I told him I didn’t know it was HIS bin and apologised. I offered to help him soak his hay or whatever he needed to do with the bin before I ‘stole’ it. But he said he didn’t need my help and that I had ruined his timing… Well I just LOVE how people treat me there. I feel like I work there and don’t do things like I should (just like when I was working in those bloody offices!) but the truth is I pay for a horse’s livery so I am a customer, not an employee. This is wrong. I don’t like the atmosphere there. I don’t feel welcome…

So anyway, after a while, I noticed Niro looked relaxed, so I took him to the outdoor school and started to play the friendly game with him. It went OK as usual. Then, I moved to the porcupine game and it was fine, until he spooked at god-knows-what. He jumped and pushed me so hard I almost fell. He did that for a few seconds and he walked on my rope which made it a bit hard to calm him down. Then eventually he stopped.
I got back to playing friendly as I wanted to be sure he was ok. He was looking around, uninterested and he looked quite worried. I tried to back him up, tossing the rope and once agin, he started to cough and cough. He was coughing so much I thought it was safer to take him back to his stall and put his rug back on. I thought maybe he was cold…

So overall we must have played for 10 minutes and it didn’t look good at all. I am so disappointed.

I put his rug on, he kept coughing for a while and I groomed him (he still had some mud all over from the last time he went to the field…don’t know when that was) and I got a text from his owner’s mum saying not to take him to the field today as he has mud fever. I was not surprised. They told me from the start he had mud fever problems and I was always surprised to get there in the morning and see that horse with mud all over his legs. I mean it is quite obvious that a horse suffering from mud fever should have his legs cleaned when coming back from a muddy field… I am shocked and angry.

They do not take care of this horse as they should. He has mud fever (but his limbs remain dirty overnight), he has a really bad cough (but they ‘forget’ to give him his drugs).

What else can I say?